1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software application development, and specifically to a quality of service (QOS) framework that enables software application behavior modification at an application platform interface (API) in response to requests across the API.
2. Description of Related Art
Open application platform interfaces (APIs) provide software applications with access to application framework services and also potentially to network communications services. However, the underlying infrastructure often needlessly wastes component resources in attempting to respond to an application service request when insufficient resources are available or when the service request parameters exceed service limits set by the system operator or service provider.
Quality of service (QOS) frameworks enable service providers to control the utilization of resources when the utilization of such resources might impact the perceived quality of service resulting from the request. However, conventional QOS frameworks are normally oriented to communication network level services, rather than to solving the problem of relating QOS needs of a software application with QOS capabilities of network resources, as such a scenario requires the software application to have inherent knowledge of the particular QOS parameters associated with a specific network service, and to interact with the network service with respect to QOS needs according to the definitions of the service.
Current communications networks typically utilize user to network protocols to request network services and potentially negotiate QOS capabilities for desired communication services and channels. Such QOS capabilities are normally inherent in network design and implementation. Therefore a service provider cannot modify the range of acceptable values. In addition, users must conform to the parameter definitions and value types of the respective protocols.
Similarly, in network node to network node protocols associated with QOS, little flexibility exists for changing the acceptable ranges of QOS values, thereby resulting in the need for strict conformance to the network protocols and parameter definitions. Current software API solutions normally do not have QOS aspects associated with a service offered by the API to applications, and, even if they did, strict adherence to the interface definition and the QOS parameter definitions would similarly be required.
Therefore, what is needed is a QOS framework that is capable of enabling behavior modification at an application framework API, preferably, in response to service requests across the API and that, preferably, will mediate QOS needs of a requesting application with the QOS capabilities of the providing service.